Muḥammad 47:23

Ulāʾika'lladhīna laʿanahumu'llāhu fa-aṣammahum wa aʿmā abṣārahum

"Those are the ones whom God has cursed, so that He has made them deaf and blinded their eyes."

Root: ل-ع-ن. And the associations of the usual English rendering ("to curse") do not give the primary sense of the root exactly.

The primary sense the lexicographers record: طَرْد وَإِبْعَاد — to drive away and remove to a distance.

That is, laʿna is not a word but a distance. God's curse is a person's being removed from mercy.

From the same root لَعِين (laʿīn — driven away) and مَلْعُون.

And this makes the word order of the verse meaningful: the curse comes first, and two verbs follow it. That is, the removal is not a result but a beginning.

أَصَمَّ — root ص-م-م, Form IV: to make deaf. And the primary sense of the root: a thing's inside being full, stopped up. Ḥajarun aṣamm — a solid stone with no cavity in it. Ṣammāʾ — without hole, sound.

That is, deafness is named in the root as "the ear's being blocked, its inside being filled" — not the lack of an organ but the closing of a passage.

أَعْمَىٰ — root ع-م-ي, Form IV: to blind.

And note: the objects of the two verbs are different:

• aṣammahum — "He made them deaf". The object is the persons themselves.
• aʿmā abṣārahum — "He blinded their eyes". The object is the organ.

This asymmetry has drawn the attention of the exegetes and is explained thus: in Arabic the verb aṣamma is attributed directly to the person (aṣammahu), whereas aʿmā can be attributed both to the person and to the eye. That is, the difference may come from usage.

I record one further observation — it is my own reading: in the sentence the organ of the ear is not mentioned at all, while the organ of the eye is. And this agrees with two earlier scenes of the sūra: in verse 16 there was listening but no mention of the ear; in verse 20 there was looking and the look was described.

I do not present this as a binding exegesis.

This verse is a link in a chain built up in the sūra, and the chain needs to be seen as a whole:

Within four verses the sūra closes all three organs: ear, eye, heart.

And this triad is the Qurʾān's standard triad. At al-Aʿrāf 7/179 (which I mentioned at verse 12) the same triad is counted: "they have hearts with which they do not understand, eyes with which they do not see, ears with which they do not hear." At al-Baqara 2/7 the same triad again: hearts and ears sealed, a film over the eyes.

And in this sūra the triad comes distributed: it is not gathered into a single verse but spread over four.

I record this as an observation about word order.

In this verse the agent of the verbs is explicitly God: laʿanahumu'llāhu fa-aṣammahum wa aʿmā.

And this raises an unavoidable question: if it is God who makes deaf and blinds, to whom does the responsibility belong?

This is one of the oldest debates in theology, and I do not enter that debate in this commentary. The reason is the method (Method): the views of the schools may be transmitted but not preferred, and on this matter even the transmitting would be honest only with a long context.

The only thing I shall record is what stands in the text:

One. At the head of the verse there is a فَ: laʿanahumu'llāhu fa-aṣammahum. The fāʾ announces sequence and cause. That is, the making deaf comes after the curse.

Two. And the curse itself had been tied to a cause: the verbs in verse 22. Since the third verse the sūra has gone on giving the ground of its rulings.

Three. And the next verse of the sūra (24) asks a question: "Do they not ponder the Qurʾān?" — that is, an act is still expected from the one addressed.

This third point matters: if the closing were absolute and irreversible, the question of the next verse would be meaningless.

I record this observation as my own reading and do not present it as a theological preference.